Contra Tiempo brings themes of social justice to dance

Published 6:16 am, Thursday, February 4, 2016

The work of Los Angeles based dance company Contra Tiempo use the art to represent themes of love, lust and social justice. They will bring those themes to their Texas debut in Midland on Saturday.

“I think all artists in their own ways are trying to engage with the world,” founder and choreographer Ana Maria Alvarez said in Los Angeles over the phone. “This is the way we’re specifically tackling our engagement. We want to the art being affecting society in a enlightening way.”

The Contra Tiempo visit is presented by the Midland African American Roots Historical Cultural Arts Council and Midland College with a performance of “Agua-Furiosa” at the Bowie Fine Arts Auditorium. Today at noon, Contra Tiempo hosts a free workshop and interactive performance open to the public in the Allison Fine Arts Building Wagner and Brown Auditorium with a complimentary light lunch served at 11:30 a.m. They held a master class at the Midland Festival Ballet on Wednesday.

“The workshops will be fun and highly physical, but we also focus on team building and other activities to help us get to know each other,” Alvarez said. “We do dances that are urban, street forms done in social situations and forms that are meant for the concert stage. We try to bring all of it together in those classes.”

Alvarez founded the company 10 years ago, after finishing up her master’s degree at UCLA. Spawned from her thesis work, the idea grew out of the desire to do dance laced with subtext pertaining to social justice coupled with Latin and African roots, she said. While studying to be a choreographer, she learned there not enough troupes offered this kind of art.

“I realized as a dancer that there weren’t many companies that represented the things I enjoyed dancing, such as these social styles,” Alvarez said. ‘Out of creating work, I decided that this was something I found that I really loved. I definitely strive to create the kind of work that I enjoy.”

With seven dancers, a stage vocalist, and a few behind the scenes members, the group is close knit, as they travel across the country performing select pieces. The current work, “Agua-Furiosa” is a personal performance dealing with the struggle of educating a child on how people connect with others, and the environment.

“I think all dance companies have one goal or another, but I think it’s good for us to see the various types of dances tell a story,” Robbyne Hocker Fuller of the Roots Council said. “All dances tell a story. All of the dances that we’ve brought in tell a story. We have so many diverse people in the United States, and there’s something in this performance for everyone. Midland seems to love and enjoy dance and all the different forms of art.”

Alvarez described ‘Agua Furiosa’ as coming from a personal place of raising a dhild amid an air of racial and environmental injustice.

The performance took a year to complete, and includes numerous theatrics as it serves as a counter story to Shakespeare's “The Tempest.”

“It’s an exploration of these characters,” Alvarez said. “In the show, there’s a ton of influences from different places. Crossovers will be prevalent in the work, the use of improvisation is also prevalent. There are a lot of forms and modality to how we dance, and that comes from where we come from.”

With so much of their subject matter tackling ideals of people struggling in social realms, a great deal of Contra Tiempo’s inspiration comes from conversations with real people experiencing hardships.

“I’m excited about the dialogue and conversations that will be very different from Los Angeles,” Alvarez said. “Every place has it’s different experiences and different perspectives. The piece will grow as we tour, because we learn from the realities that are different. I plan to do a lot of listening and to connect meaningfully with all the people who see and experience the piece.”